Friday, March 26, 2010

To listen closely, with every fiber of our being, at every moment of the day, is one of the most difficult things in the world, and yet it is essential if we mean to find the God whom we are seeking. If we stop listening to what we find hard to take then, as the Abbot of St. Benoit-sur-Loire puts it in a striking phrase, “We’re likely to pass God by without even noticing Him.” And now it is our obedience which proves that we have been paying close attention. That word “obedience” is derived from the Latin oboedire, which shares its roots with audire, to hear. So to obey really means to hear and then act upon what we have heard, or, in other words, to see that the listening achieves its aim.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Kallistos Ware, “The Power of the Name,” in Elizabeth Behr-Sigel, The Place of the Heart: An Introduction to Orthodox Spirituality. Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1992, p. 138.

To pray is to pass from the state where grace is present in our hearts secretly and unconsciously, to the point of full inner perception and conscious awareness when we experience and feel the activity of the Spirit directly and immediately.

The purpose of prayer can be summarized in the phrase, “Become what you are.”